Beyond Defensiveness
Our newish book, Beyond Defensiveness, is available as a PDF for free, if you email me. You can also purchase a printed copy.
What Flow and Transcendent Design Mean for Museums #CX #UX / On Yayoi Kusuma
Kusuma Yayoi has been on Instagram accounts big and small over the last year. Her exhibition Infinity Mirrors has been selling out faster than THE concert of the year. Her work has been hailed as “the perfect art experience for the social-media age.” Kusuma’s work has become coupled with the national addition with self-promotion and …
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Inclusion-Centered Leadership
Inclusion occurs through considered actions. Leaders play an important role in transforming the ethos of inclusion from words into actions. That said, often, inclusions practices are translated into large actions, like requiring diversity training or implementing diversity hiring policies. Those are like bringing in the right ingredients for a great feast. If you don’t deal …
Truth and Tales in Museums
On August 14, 2003, I found myself standing at the Great Lakes Science Center chatting with a Chinese master printmaker stanchioned within the exhibition when the overhead lights flickered and went black before the emergency lights went on. I was supposed to be ducking out of work to attend a family wedding with my soon …
How White Museum-Workers Can Combat Museum Supremacy
Today’s post has been written by Brilliant Idea Studio co-principal, Joe Ionna. Illustrations made by Seema Rao. As competing narratives, histories, and facts have battled it out in the media, public spaces, and our political life. Like many of you, I was dumbfounded to see flags of Nazi Germany and the Confederacy paraded through the …
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Cost-Benefit Analysis of Docent Programs (Data Template)
How can you quantify and assess the relative benefit of staff teachers to docents? Not easily, truthfully. This is a fuzzy math problem, at best. But, before I lay out some ways to consider this, let me offer some useful thoughts and questions to help you on your path. Mission-Driven & Client-Driven Most, if not …
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Inaction is an Action: #MuseumsResist is a better One
I had the extreme pleasure of being part of this year’s MuseumCamp hosted by Nina Simon at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. For those who are unaware of this program, it’s sort of a hybrid museum conference, personal growth program, and summer camp smushed into three days. Intense would be a useful …
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Drawing to Help Construct Meaning
Drawing is a dividing word. For some people drawing highlights their weakness. Few people it turns out can draw like Michelangelo without practice–not even Michelangelo. Artists are trained. They practice their craft. No one is born drawing. If you can get past your hesitation about drawing out of the equation, drawing can be an incredibly …
Self-Care: Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry is a positivity-focused planning process that allows teams to build on the best of their past to dream of the best future. This strategy can be helpful in organizational problem-solving. You start with a goal (rather than a problem, as in problem-based learning or design thinking), and then you go through five steps: …
Centering Empathy in your Visitor-Practice in Museums
Empathy is one of those things that is hard to verbalize and even harder to feel. If sympathy is when you say “I know how you feel” then empathy is when you connect with someone’s pain to not be able to say anything at all. Empathy is hard to gain, requires time, and involves work. …
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